How do we represent it?
Creating a Family tree is very simple. We have already identified the names of the family members. Now we have to identify them on our own! For that, we have the help of CPG Grey. He will help us designing our own following a certain criteria.
Watch the video, and design your own family tree using the scheme presented by the video. You may check the 'feedback' section to review's key items from the video.
Transcript of the video's audio
This is you, this is your family tree, and this is Your Family Tree Explained.
You have parents, and your parents have parents. These are your grandparents, who also have parents—your great-grandparents. Keep adding parents, keep adding "greats." For every "G" in the name, there is one generation between you and that person.
Grandparents? One "G," one generational in-betweener.
Great-great-great-grandparents? Four G's, four in-betweeners.
Continuing with the basics, you have siblings, and so do your parents. These are your aunts and uncles. Moving up the tree, you may call these people your great-aunts and uncles, but your grandparents' siblings are also your grand-aunts and uncles. "Greats" are reserved for the levels above "grand." Your great-grandparents' siblings are your great-grand-aunts and uncles.
Now going down the tree, your siblings' children are your nieces and nephews—collectively called niblings—and you are their aunt or uncle. Their children are your grandnieces and nephews, and you are their grand-aunt or grand-uncle.
We've gone up and down; now it's time to go sideways.
When you get married, you gain everyone's favorite—your in-laws. You are on the same level of the family tree as your spouse's siblings. You're kind of a "pseudo-sibling." All the new family's relationships to you are the same as to your spouse, but they get the "in-law" prefix.
It's pretty straightforward except for one case: your spouse’s siblings are your siblings-in-law, but are your siblings-in-law's spouses also your siblings-in-law? It's a little unclear.
Alright, enough with the in-laws—on to the reason you're probably watching this video: cousins.
Your aunts' and uncles' children are your cousins, but there are many kinds of cousins, and to better understand them, we need to simplify this family tree and think downward.
Here is you, your children, and your grandchildren. Your grandchildren are first cousins to each other, and their children—your great-grandchildren—are second cousins to each other, and so on.
The cousin number follows the same "G" rule: it tells you how many in-betweeners exist before the connection on the family tree.
Fourth cousins? Four in-betweeners, and a shared great-great-great-grandparent.
According to this rule, your first cousins and you connect at your grandparent. Second cousins share a great-grandparent connection. Just match the cousin number with the number of "G's," and you're all set. Simple!
Side note:
Following this rule in reverse means that siblings can technically call each other "zero-th" cousins, which they totally should. And does that make you your own "-1" cousin? Weird.
All done now, nothing more to talk about... oh right, the "once removed" thing.
You may have noticed that cousins are on the same level. "Removed" simply describes how many generations apart people are.
For example, what's the family connection between these two? Start by taking the smaller cousin number—first cousins—and count the levels apart: once removed.
These are first cousins twice removed, thrice removed. And these are second cousins once removed.
Doing all of this on our simplified drawing of your descendants is a bit too easy, but most family trees look more like this. The rules are still the same—first cousins, second cousins, and the "removed"—but it gets harder to quickly figure out exactly who your second cousin twice removed or your great-grand-aunt-in-law is.
To help, there's a chart you can download that will make it much easier to figure out what kind of grand-nibling or cousin-removed someone is at your next family reunion—and, obviously, show how cool you are.
Now we're really done. Unless... you start thinking about the math behind all of these family members.
Just how many great-great-great-great-grandparents do you have? 64?
And those ex-grandparents had kids, giving you a whole lot of cousins.
This chart happens to stop at 10th cousins, of which you have more than 2,000?
That seems like way too many. But these numbers come with some big, possibly unsettling asterisks attached to them, which we'll talk about more in Part 2: Family Genetics Explained.
CC by Luka.
Here you have the list of items to organize your tree:
Star = You
Blue square = Male member
Pink Circle = Female member
Orange Diamonds = Male & female members that are the same level (or under level) as you.